26/04/2022
KONIG GALERIE is pleased to
present AN IMPENDING DISASTER (HAHAHA),
a solo exhibition by Claudia Comte
() in the Vienna gallery.
A trash-strewn beach; a sea of plastic; a damaged pipeline; a kangaroo and joey
escaping a wildfire; monkeys bred for laboratory testing; cows raised for livestock in cramped conditions: the HAHAHAs that dance
across the canvas and amass on the ceiling form a quieting presence in this tableau of difficult images. What does it mean to evoke laughter When there is no humour to be found?
The HAHAHAs in AN IMPENDING DISASTER (HAHAHA) are lifted from French, American and Belgian comics and individually convey the
characteristics of their original sources.
Scrawled or thickly outlined, some snake across the canvas while others obscure the image beneath. For Claudia Comte, HAHAHA
enters this exhibition as a loaded utterance. In the aesthetic language of comics, protagonists are often personified as evil by the glee they
outwardly express at the misfortune or distress of others: 'HAHAHA' to explosions, disappearances and pratfalls. HAHAHA affirms
a tragedy at the same time as articulating a pleasure derived from harm. In bringing this comic language to bear on these images of
anthropogenic destruction, Comte explores the ways in which humans arrive at an ethics through a visual language, asking whether the
ubiquity of these images mobilises or desensitises us.
